


Wild Animals (Tear Down This City)

by MoonySideDown



Series: Batbrats [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Batdad, Bruce just can't stop collecting orphans can he, F/M, Gen, Metahumans, batfam, batfamily, other people's ocs might pop up in here too who knows???, when they're causing trouble all over gotham how can he not though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-06-01 01:37:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15132236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonySideDown/pseuds/MoonySideDown
Summary: Punk kids running around Gotham acting like heroes isn't exactly a new thing. It's not even notable, really. Just another occasional annoyance Batman has to deal with.But they don't usually continue their crusade after a stern warning (or five) from The Bat.And they don't usually ask for his help.





	Wild Animals (Tear Down This City)

The building is almost fully engulfed in flame when Batman arrives, crouching on the roof of the apartment complex across the street. Heat comes in waves even at this distance while the abandoned structure burns.

 

“The old Greer building, abandoned for the past fifteen years since the owner went bankrupt. There are no current documented residents.” Alfred’s calm voice over the comm is a stark contrast to the sirens screaming and heavy engines idling on the streets below.

 

Bruce picks up on Alfred’s unspoken warning, carefully watching the building for any sign of movement outside of the dancing flames. In Gotham, any unguarded building can easily become a haven for the many homeless on the city’s streets, even during a hot summer night. “Who called in the fire?”

 

A brief pause. “A resident of the nearby apartments. Mister Charles Brooks. Apparently he saw the flames from his window. How incredibly suspicious.”

 

Bruce ‘hmm’s in response.

 

There. Movement in a window. Dark in contrast to the fire and flickering emergency lights. His entire body tenses and he waits to see it again.

 

There. The top floor, the only one not fully involved in the blaze. A man, shirtless with a hand over his mouth. Definitely not a firefighter. 

 

The noise below covers the sound of his grapple launching. He swings silently through the air, smashes through the warping glass of a window feet-first. Lands on his feet.

 

The man turned to face the sudden sound when Bruce arrived. Now he stumbles backwards into the opposite wall, coughing on smoke with tears streaming down his face. “Bat-”

 

Bruce swoops forward and gets his arm around the man, leaps back out of the broken window, uses the momentum to swing into the closed-off road in the middle of a group of startled firefighters.

 

“We didn’t think-” One begins.

 

“Is anyone else inside?” Bruce demands of the man standing shakily on the pavement looking like he doesn’t know where he is.

 

It’s a few good coughs before the man has the breath and presence of mind to answer. With each passing moment Bruce can feel the building being devoured. “There were a couple of girls...I saw ‘em running around… ‘for the fire got bad…”

 

He fires his grapple for a second time and leaves the man to the EMTs that are rushing over. In the moment or two he has in the air he snatches the breathing mask from one of his belt compartments and fixes it over his mouth and nose.

 

The building creaks and snaps loud enough to be heard above the roar of the flames. Part of the floor has already collapsed since he rescued the homeless man moments ago. The whole place is ready to tumble down at any moment, taking anyone inside with it.

 

He stands on the squealing, groaning floor without moving. Waiting.

 

Something on one of the lower floors collapses and the building shakes, wooden beams snapping like bones. The floor is hot. Somewhere glass shatters as windows blow out.

 

The cowl’s sensors alert him to the intense heat, a flashing red alert on the vision overlay. He ignores it.

 

There. He turns his head slightly, staring into the hallway that’s slowly clogging with smoke.

 

A cough. Harsh and wheezing.

 

He skirts the hole in the center of the room, the floor flexing uncomfortably beneath his boots, and rushes out of the doorway.

 

The hall is dark with smoke, worse than the room he’d left, and lit eerily by the fire licking at the bottom of the staircase. Shadows move in disorienting and unpredictable patterns. More windows blow out and the building groans like a living thing in its death throes.

 

He keeps listening, looking around the room, trying to tune out the constant roar of the fire. Adrenaline is making his limbs tingle in a way he’s long grown accustomed to.

 

Another cough. Close.

 

He turns. A dark shape is slumped on the floor in the corner, barely noticeable among the shadows of the banister shifting and jumping. More coughs and harsh wheezing.

 

A girl, dressed all in black, a hood obscuring her face. The hood doesn’t matter, he knows who she is. Crow, one of the three amateur vigilantes he’s been warning off the streets for the past month and a half. He forces down his irritation for the moment in favor of getting them out alive. He can’t tell if Crow is conscious or not, but she is still breathing. For the moment.

 

An intense coughing fit shakes her body, each intake of breath ragged and wheezing. He pulls off his breathing mask and presses it over her mouth and nose. It isn’t the pure oxygen she needs, and the fit isn’t perfect, but it will stop her from inhaling much more of the poisoned air around them.

 

One hand pushes limply against his arm when he presses the mask to her face.

 

“Crow,” He growls, “where’s Lioness and Wolf?”

 

She doesn’t open her eyes, keeps coughing into the mask, and gestures weakly to the room down the hall.

 

He nudges her head back down onto the floor where there’s a better shot at oxygen, and rushes down the hall into the other room.

 

The walls are blackened with soot but it’s still easy to spot another figure huddled against the wall beneath the windows.

 

“Lioness.”

 

The girl jerks as if she’s been startled out of sleep, then lifts her head weakly. “Bat...man?”

 

“Where’s Wolf?” He asks on the move, walking along the edges of the room where the floor is less likely to give way under his feet just yet.

 

“Not...not here.” Lioness takes a wheezing breath and lets out a few choking coughs.

 

Once he reaches her Bruce pulls her up and guides her into a crouch. “We’re getting out. Stay close.”

 

She’s surprisingly steady on her feet despite her coughing, but he keeps one of her wrists firmly in hand anyway to keep her moving into the hall where Crow is laying motionless.

 

“Sh-she couldn’t breathe, is she-”

 

“She’ll be fine, we’ll get you both help.” Bruce lets go of Lioness’ wrist to lift Crow onto his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

 

Without his mask the smoke is beginning to make his chest burn. Dizziness combined with the unstable building threatens to knock him off his feet.

 

He shakes his head, takes hold of Lioness’ wrist, and marches for the window he came in through.

 

The hole in the center of the room has grown into a lopsided, gaping pit, flames jumping at the dangling boards like eager puppies.

 

Bruce’s foot goes straight through the floorboards when he steps into the room. He manages to shift his weight and pull himself back before his leg goes completely through the floor, but in the movement he lets go of Lioness’ wrist and she falls to the floor.

 

When she hits the ground the floorboards crack like kindling around her. A handful break off and fell into the inferno devouring the lower floors.

 

Coughing on the smoke, Bruce leans down and hauls her to her feet by her shirt, then guides her arms around his waist.

 

“I can handle-”

 

“Hang on.”

 

The building lurches. It’s coming down. People are yelling outside and Bruce’s lungs are screaming too.

 

He aims his grapple with his free hand, the other holding Crow’s limp arms, and fires out of one of the broken windows. Feels it catch, and leaps.

 

Batman and two limp figures burst from the shambling carcass of a building into the muggy summer air. The structure creaks and finally falls in on itself, belching sparks and black smoke into the air all the way down.

 

The grapple brings the trio to a ledge on the apartment building opposite. Bruce lands on his feet and lets go of Lioness before he fully stops, allowing her to crumple to her knees gasping for breath.

 

At first he’s afraid Crow isn’t breathing, but when he lays her on her side on the cold concrete she starts coughing and gasping. He pulls off the mask on her face, she gulps in fresh air.

 

“She...her inhaler...left side...in her belt…” Lioness chokes out.

 

Bruce turns her onto her other side and pats the belt around her waist, finds the one with the shape he needs and pulls the inhaler free. A few sharp shakes of the small plastic device, then he removes the cap and holds it to her mouth.

 

She takes a breath when he presses the canister down, once, twice.

 

He turns back to look at Lioness, still on her hands and knees coughing and spitting out soot and dirt.

 

“Where’s your inhaler?”

 

She turns a bit to look at him in surprise, like he doesn’t know what constricted airways sound like. Then she fumbles in her own belt pocket for a moment, retrieves her own inhaler and takes two puffs from it.

 

It makes the coughing worse for both of them, at first. But after a few moments the coughs don’t sound as tight, the inhales still rough but less strangled.

 

The building is smoking rubble now, most of the fire smothered by the collapse. Thick smoke rises from the wreckage while firefighters spray plumes of water onto the heap to take care of whatever’s left of the blaze.

 

Bruce stands on the ledge, back against the building behind him, watching the two girls regain their bearings.

 

Lioness sits back, stares up at the overcast night sky. Her dark brown hair, blackened by the night and the soot, is stuck all over her face. Sweat and tears have streaked through the layer of ash and grime on her face around her domino mask.

 

Crow is on her side on the ledge, breathing a bit easier but visibly exhausted. Her light skin is covered in grime as well, smudged and streaked like war paint until it nearly disappears under her hood’s shadow.

 

“What were you doing in there?” Bruce asks when they seem calmer and the noise on the street has lessened.

 

Lioness coughs, tries to get the wisps of sweaty hair away from her eyes. “Trying to rescue a homeless man.”

 

“He’s fine. At the hospital by now. But that’s not what I meant.”

 

She frowns.

 

“You’re untrained and inexperienced. You’re going to get yourselves or someone else killed. Go home, get back to your lives.”

 

Lioness’ eyes go hard, her hands are fists. For a moment Bruce braces himself for attack.

 

“We need your help.” Crow says suddenly, and Lioness looks away from him.

 

Bruce remains ready for an attack anyway, still facing Lioness, and waits for Crow to elaborate.

 

“Wolf is missing. She...disappeared a month ago...and we don’t have any more leads.” She pushes herself off the concrete into a sitting position, although she’s still sagging a bit like she just wants to lay back down. “We need your help.”

 

Lioness is on her feet now, pacing like a caged animal. “We were just going to light your signal but the switch is locked.”

 

“Didn’t think you’d come...when you saw it was us, anyway…” Crow coughed.

 

Bruce frowns, narrows his eyes. The lock on the switch is news to him, and he makes a mental note to ask Gordon about it the next chance he gets. But that’s not what’s eating at him.

 

“How did you know the man was in there, and how did you get to the fire so fast?” He means them to be a simple pair of questions but his voice comes out demanding and rough from breathing smoke.

 

There’s the slightest shift in the girl’s’ body language. Both of them tense, glance at each other, and anger burns in his chest in the same place the smoke did.

 

“You set the fire.” It isn’t a question. “Why?”

 

“We needed to get your attention.” Lioness answers, stiff and not meeting his eyes.

 

“You almost killed someone.”

 

Crow stays almost motionless, apparently staring at the concrete below her, while Lioness turns to glare at him, her whole body tense and angry.

 

“You can’t blame us for that, we checked the building. He was tucked away somewhere!”

 

His hands are clenched into fists and he consciously relaxes them. He doesn’t want to fight them, but if he seems ready for it Lioness will always accept the chance. It’s like dealing with a wild animal, appropriately enough.

 

“What makes you think Wolf is missing, and hasn’t just run away?” He’s careful to keep his tone as even and neutral as possible, not mocking or sarcastic.

 

Lioness backs down a little, but still looks ready to rip his head off if she has to.

 

“She wouldn’t go anywhere without telling us, not like that.” She says slowly, watching his reactions as carefully as he’s watching hers.

 

“She didn’t even say she was going out, she just...wasn’t there one night.” Crow says, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

 

“And didn’t come back in the morning.” Lioness adds, posture relaxing just a little.

 

There’s sadness in their voices, making them sound less like troublemakers acting like crime fighters, and more like scared children, missing their best friend. He adjusts his position, stands more relaxed, crosses his arms and lets his cape drape all around him almost like a robe.

 

“Where have you looked?”

 

Lioness sighs. “Hospitals, clinics, emergency rooms…”

 

“Shelters, police stations, hotels…” Crow counts off on her gloved fingers.

 

Bruce glances out over the city. If Wolf ran away, there’s no telling how far away she could be by now. A month was a long time. And if she was taken…

 

“Did you file a missing person’s report with the police?”

 

Crow snorts, then coughs. “Would you? Yes hello mister policeman, my best friend, a masked and hooded vigilante, has mysteriously disappeared. Could you get on that? No sorry I can’t tell you anything about her.”

 

“How do you expect me to help, then?”

 

The girls look at each other for a moment. Crow nods, Lioness shrugs and shifts her weight on her feet. After the wordless exchange Crow fishes in one belt pocket, then pulls out a small black rectangle and holds it out to him.

 

“This is everything about her. About us. I was just going to include what seemed relevant but...anything could be, I guess. I thought it was better to just give you everything.”

 

It’s a flash drive. With everything about them. She doesn’t have to spell it out for him to realize exactly what’s contained in that tiny bundle of plastic and circuitry. Details about who they are. Their real names, where they live. Everything that could get them killed if it fell into the wrong hands.

 

And she’s just holding it out to him, waiting.

 

He doesn’t move to take it.

 

“I have conditions.”

 

Crow doesn’t lower her arm. “I figured.”

 

Lioness shuffles in place, crosses her arms.

 

“I help you, we bring Wolf home, and the three of you stop this. No more patrolling, no more fighting, no more arson.”

 

“Necessary arson,” Crow says with a tired smirk that reminds him of his oldest son, “but okay. Agreed.”

 

He looks to Lioness, waiting.

 

She’s staring out over the city, watching the distantly blinking lights of a radio tower. Bruce waits and doesn’t ask anything again. He’s a patient man.

 

“Agreed.” She finally sighs, her posture sagging just a little as if she’s a puppet whose strings have been cut.

 

Bruce nods, uncrossing his arms. He takes the drive from Crow’s hand and slips it into a pocket in his utility belt, then walks to the edge of the ledge and readies his grapple.

 

“So...you want us to meet you somewhere...or what?” Lioness asks from behind him.

 

He doesn’t look back at her, too busy mentally mapping his route back to where he left the batmobile parked in an out of the way part of the city. “Follow me.”

 

The grapple fires, and he swings out over Gotham, cape flaring behind him, blending in with the night.


End file.
